About The
Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine
An
online clearinghouse for manuscripts treating the humanities and medicine.
Editors
Howard Spiro, M.D., Editor
howard.spiro@yale.edu
George
A. Trone, Ph.D., Managing Editor and Webmaster
info@yjhm.org
William G. Rector, M.D., Poetry Editor
poetry@yjhm.org
Regular Contributors
Raymond Cavanaugh, Jr. -- "Fallen Stars"
Brian T. Maurer -- "Notes from a Healer"
Robert S. Rosson, M.D. -- "Gut Feelings"
***
September 10, 2008
Our journal continues to thrive as a store-house of contributions to the broad area of humanities in medicine. Fired by the poetry and stories that many of you have brought to us, the electronic format remains ideal: cheap and rapid, and as limitless as the Atlantic. George Trone remains at the helm, with his broad literate background keeping us still on an even keel. I thank him once again, for his dedication to this labor of love. So many hard-copy journals, with the very same goals, have failed owing to the expense of editing a paper journal, but George has stayed the course! And we welcome Bill Rector as our poetry editor for more than a year. He enlarges my own mid-19th century oredilection for meter and rhyme, and I am grateful.
I am 84, with god’s/nature’s grace, but I keep hoping that there is someone out there with a Yale connection who would be enthusiastic about taking over my task, whenever—and before. My father always warned me not to try to rule beyond the grave, though my children suspect me of exactly such designs. Get in touch with George Trone or me to learn more.
We continue to welcome words from anyone who hopes to influence and educate “health-care providers;” their contributions should be reasonably literate and pertinent to the broad field of medicine and medical practice.
Observations from medical students and student nurses are especially valued. As yet untrammeled by indoctrination and not yet hardened by experience, their visions often prove as illuminating as the narratives of patients. I would love to see more stories — “narrative” now the style is — from patients, because they may see us physicians at our worst and, one hopes, sometimes at our best. Descriptions of the patient-physician encounter have been an unfailing source of correction and insight.
Alan Astrow has provided much for readers to think about, in the essays he has edited on religion in medicine, broadly described nowadays as “spirituality.” Physicians have been educated to believe that we are scientists skeptical about anything that cannot be tested or measured. But all of us are, in the old phrase, “body, mind, and spirit,” a trinity still too often ignored by doctors, to our patients’ sorrow. Psychotropic drugs can cure depression, but they do not banish sorrow. There is much more to say on this topic; continuing dialogues between the clergy and physicians has always been a source of courage, as each generation wrestles with eternal questions.
I call your attention to our new YJHM Blog. You can view the most recent entries on our main journal homepage or on the separate blog site (http://blog.yjhm.org). It is a bit of an experiment to test the usefulness of a less formal means of communication than our regular prose and poetry publications. Please contact us with any comments or ideas for the blog.
Copyright continues a murky question, most advisers holding that copyright flows from the “pen.” We claim no copyright on anything published in this journal. You can re-publish it anywhere you want, but we would appreciate a link to this endeavor.
So continue to send along your contributions by e-mail to George Trone at info@yjhm.org with a copy to me at howard.spiro@yale.edu. Poetry submissions should be directed to Bill Rector at poetry@yjhm.org. And send us advice about any new directions we should take. We have been publising a few book reviews and from time to time, notices of classics that need rereading.
Bless you all.
Howard Spiro |
